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New law proposal makes The Netherlands privacy-unfriendly

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Re: New law proposal makes The Netherlands privacy-unfriendly

#61

Post by saint_fiasco »

rayiner wrote: post #45
jacquesm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is the right way to frame the discussion. It's not US versus EU or EU countries against each other. It's simply people versus their various over-reaching governments. No country is substantially better than any other, a couple of exceptions exist but those are very small countries that have little or no impact on the world as it is today. So there's work to do. Everywhere . The interesting discussi…

> It's simply people versus their various over-reaching governments. If pretty much every liberal democracy of any significant size is doing it, maybe we should stop and think about why. Blaming "over-reaching governments" is too simplistic in my opinion. I have a hard time believing that the legislative process is so broken in every liberal democracy that such surveillance is happening contrary to the public will.

> in every liberal democracy

Could this be the reason? Maybe it's an arms race and each government is afraid of being spied by the others so they invest in surveillance too.

Re: New law proposal makes The Netherlands privacy-unfriendly

#62

Post by nationcrafting »

cmdrfred wrote: post #23
tptacek wrote: post #6

I know that this is a tricky question to engage with on HN, but is there a major-market country in Europe --- say, from the list of Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Switzerland, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Austria, Denmark, and Finland --- that is fundamentally more privacy-friendly than the US, in black-letter terms? US privacy laws have loopholes you can drive a truck through. But the limite…

I believe that on paper, the United States is the freest and most privacy friendly place on the planet (well the paper that isn't classified). In practice not so much. Things wealthy people care about are very high privacy (financial transactions, private offshore holdings, medical records, etc) things not so wealthy people care about are basically wide open (criminal records, books you rent in a library, phone calls…

>not once did I see someone question if the government even has a right to determine who is allowed to be married, and why is should be involved at all.

This has literally been the Libertarian Party's position since the early 70s: it's none of government's business deciding whom one is or isn't allowed to marry.

Re: New law proposal makes The Netherlands privacy-unfriendly

#63

Post by pluma »

Tomte wrote: post #51
pluma wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several forms of privacy here and it's important to make the distinction before arguing about what country has the better laws. One form of privacy is about what information the government is allowed to gather about its citizens and what citizens can do about it. Before Snowden many would have argued that this is the US's strong point because of things like the 4th Amendment. Post-Snowden it is pretty evide…

There never was a "bank secrecy", but almost everyone believes there was and it was abolished in some attack on our rights. It's possibly one one the widest-spread legal myths. An acquaintance of mine is a state prosecutor, and he's always amused about this. IIRC it goes so far that when he requests information from a bank employee, he usually directly tells him to ask his in-house legal counsel if he's allowed to wi…

For the record, I'm not anti-Christian, I'm anti-religion.

I agree that the CDU itself is not in direct violation of the separation of church and state but Germany decidedly does not have a separation between church and state -- unlike the US. The absurdity of course being that Germany is religiously fairly moderate in comparison.

I'll also freely point out that most of the benefits religions (or Christianity in particular) receive in Germany[0] are not actually being justified with religious arguments but arguments from tradition or the will of the majority and so on.

My biggest gripe with the two big Christian churches in particular (the Catholic church of Germany and the federation of various Lutheran and other evangelical churches) is with the church-operated hospitals, kindergartens, schools and so on.

First of all, because these are operated by the church, the regular labour laws do not fully apply. Instead the church is allowed to apply ecclesiastical law. Aside from voiding various labour protection rights this also allows them to openly discriminate in accordance with religious laws -- e.g. against non-believers or (in the case of the Catholic church) gay or divorced couples.

Additionally, despite being granted this special status, in many cases the majority of the financial burden is actually carried by the state[1], in some cases covering up to 100%[2]. For all intents and purposes, these are public, state-funded institutions that are operated under church law for no discernible reason other than history. And while we're talking about accidents of history, Germany is also directly paying the church on top of all that[3][4].

As for the church tax: I'm sure that the position of the Christian churches is not unique -- if the Jewish council or a hypothetical unified Muslim church[5] was to levy such a tax I'm sure that would be collected just as well. But it's inconsistent to argue that it's fine for the government to collect church tax alongside actual taxes for the churches but not other mandatory fees (like the Rundfunkbeitrag -- the now universally mandatory fee that supports the public broadcasting channels). I'm aware of the argument about separating the state and the public media (because we're paranoid about state-controlled media for obvious reasons) of course, but the core point is that the tax agency is not a state-sanctioned collection agency for membership fees.

Oh, and of course there's little things like the fact that religious freedom of the parents trumps infant boys' right to bodily integrity[6]. But to be fair, that court decision was mostly based on not upsetting the Jewish community and we have good reason not to want to upset the Jewish community considering what we did to them less than a hundred years ago.

[0]: http://www.3sat.de/page/?source=/ard/sendung/176358/index.ht...

[1]: http://www1.wdr.de/fernsehen/aks/themen/kirchlichetraegersch...

[2]: http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/38/38390/1.html

[3]: http://www.taz.de/!5064407/

[4]: http://blog.handelsblatt.com/handelsblog/2013/10/11/warum-za...

[5]: The problem Muslims face with regard to being recognized at the same level as Christians and Jews is that Islam is not as well-structured in Germany at this point. Because Islam is still largely an immigrant religion (i.e. its members being an incredibly heterogeneous group coming from many different places), there isn't one Islam but several versions of it, much like the many different evangelical churches. Unlike the different evangelical churches they're not likely to unify any time soon. It took the evangelical churches until the early 20th century to unify in Germany.

[6]: http://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/ein-jahr-beschneidungsges...

Re: New law proposal makes The Netherlands privacy-unfriendly

#64

Post by rtpg »

jacquesm wrote: post #47
rayiner wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's simply people versus their various over-reaching governments. If pretty much every liberal democracy of any significant size is doing it, maybe we should stop and think about why. Blaming "over-reaching governments" is too simplistic in my opinion. I have a hard time believing that the legislative process is so broken in every liberal democracy that such surveillance is happening contrary to the public will.

> maybe we should stop and think about why They tell us why! - to keep us safe - to protect our way of life - to protect the children - insert your own favorite fear mongering here And all that without a shred of proof. 'if everybody is doing it' wasn't a very good reason to jump on the bandwagon in high-school, I see absolutely no reason to come to the conclusion that 'if every liberal democracy of any significant s…

Instead of some strawmen, you could pull real reasons:

- industrial espionage

- government espionage

- wiretaps and other active investigations

- supporting military ops (like "counter-terrorism" stuff)

Throwing out those strawmen won't convince anyone of anything. The discussion of whether it's worth it is important enough to introduce nuance to what you're saying (are you against the NSA tapping, say, Kim Jong-Un's phone?)

Re: New law proposal makes The Netherlands privacy-unfriendly

#65

Post by jacquesm »

rtpg wrote: post #64
jacquesm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> maybe we should stop and think about why They tell us why! - to keep us safe - to protect our way of life - to protect the children - insert your own favorite fear mongering here And all that without a shred of proof. 'if everybody is doing it' wasn't a very good reason to jump on the bandwagon in high-school, I see absolutely no reason to come to the conclusion that 'if every liberal democracy of any significant s…

Instead of some strawmen, you could pull real reasons: - industrial espionage - government espionage - wiretaps and other active investigations - supporting military ops (like "counter-terrorism" stuff) Throwing out those strawmen won't convince anyone of anything. The discussion of whether it's worth it is important enough to introduce nuance to what you're saying (are you against the NSA tapping, say, Kim Jong-Un's…

Those strawman aren't mine, they are the reasons stated by the people that push these things on us.

Re: New law proposal makes The Netherlands privacy-unfriendly

#66

Post by ionised »

tptacek wrote: post #19
ionised wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. They're all as bad as eachother, except the UK which is by far the worst of all of them (USA included). In the USA at least though, there is the illusion of having some form of debate over privacy and surveillance (USA Freedom Act). In the UK and EU they aren't even pretending to have this debate. They're just steaming right on ahead with draconian and regressive policies.

I have a really hard time believing that the US is categorically better than Europe on this. Could you maybe be a bit more specific? I think I share the opinion about the UK being worse than the US on this spectrum, and could probably flesh it out if someone very familiar with UK law was here to fact-check me.

I was referring more to the USA Freedom Act, which in fairness does very little to reform mass surveillance (and in many cases makes it a lot worse) but the fact that this 'reform' was tabled at all is something that hasn't occurred at all in the UK and EU.

The public has largely been ignored and the government of the UK actually quietly rewrote laws relating to surveillance in order to grant immunity from prosecution to GCHQ.

They even allowed Privacy International to continue with their law suit for a whole year knowing that it wouldn't go anywhere because of the changes they had made to the law without notifying anybody.

Re: New law proposal makes The Netherlands privacy-unfriendly

#67

Post by [deleted] »

rtpg wrote: post #64
jacquesm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> maybe we should stop and think about why They tell us why! - to keep us safe - to protect our way of life - to protect the children - insert your own favorite fear mongering here And all that without a shred of proof. 'if everybody is doing it' wasn't a very good reason to jump on the bandwagon in high-school, I see absolutely no reason to come to the conclusion that 'if every liberal democracy of any significant s…

Instead of some strawmen, you could pull real reasons: - industrial espionage - government espionage - wiretaps and other active investigations - supporting military ops (like "counter-terrorism" stuff) Throwing out those strawmen won't convince anyone of anything. The discussion of whether it's worth it is important enough to introduce nuance to what you're saying (are you against the NSA tapping, say, Kim Jong-Un's…

[deleted]

Re: New law proposal makes The Netherlands privacy-unfriendly

#68

Post by ctx »

tptacek wrote: post #6

I know that this is a tricky question to engage with on HN, but is there a major-market country in Europe --- say, from the list of Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Switzerland, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Austria, Denmark, and Finland --- that is fundamentally more privacy-friendly than the US, in black-letter terms? US privacy laws have loopholes you can drive a truck through. But the limite…

I'm by no means an expert, but I'd say Belgium currently handles privacy in a reasonable manner that's definitely more privacy-friendly than the US.

Like many countries we have a commission for the protection of privacy to ensure personal data is handled with care. One of its responsibilities is to uphold the proportionality principle. The law mandates that personal data should only be collected in so far it is reasonable to do so and the collection needs to be intended for a specific purpose. The commission usually offers guidance and recommendations in such matters, but they do more than that. A few weeks ago they took Facebook to court because of, in their words, a flagrant breach of privacy legislation. Tracking people without an account and without providing them a way to opt-out was deemed unacceptable.

Companies are not the only possible invasion of privacy. The intelligence services are another example. They are monitored by a permanent and independent committee: Standing Committee I. The members are appointed by the Senate and have security clearance. This only started in the early nineties and precisely because there were problems. Now, if there's a complaint from a citizen who feels like he or she has been treated unfairly (I'm guessing this excludes foreigners, not sure), the committee will investigate. Their annual report looks quite interesting, and is way more specific than I expected, but unlike the site it's only available in French or Dutch.

A citizen can request the files any part of government has on him or her, this includes the intelligence services and state security. Access can be denied in some cases, but the refusal has to be accompanied by a proper explanation.

What if the privacy laws aren't respected by the government or the police? Entire court cases have been scrapped because the initial phone tap was deemed illegal, thus tainting all subsequently obtained evidence. There needs to be a properly motivated reason to start tapping phones and it's only allowed for specific types of crime. Drug dealers and arms merchants have been set free because of (clerical) errors regarding search warrants. The law and the various procedures will probably evolve to fix such issues. I haven't quite figured out if this does anything to disrupt parallel construction, but that's another matter.

Upholding existing laws is only part of the puzzle. Any government can try to pass overbearing and privacy-invading legislation. That doesn't have to be malicious in intent. Not everyone agrees on what is an acceptable intrusion on privacy and what is not. Belgium is no exception. A decent example is the recent data retention law, inspired by the EU directive. Law enforcement supported the retention, others did not. A human rights organization (Liga voor Mensenrechten) went to court and the Constitutional Court of Belgium struck down the law.

On a different note, large-scale surveillance by the Belgian government seems unlikely. Maybe the government would try if they could, I don't know. It probably helps that Belgium is tiny and many of its government agencies, intelligence services included, are not particularly well-funded. Then there's the complicated government structure and the wide variety of political parties that have to form coalition governments. Keeping secrets is hard in such an environment. Wild speculation: maybe this is why Belgacom (now Proximus) was hacked instead of formally requesting an exchange of intelligence information?

I think (hope?) a more balanced approach like in Belgium can work in bigger countries, further bolstering cooperation between allies. Sensitive personal information can be shared more freely between nations if they offer the same level of privacy protection.

Re: New law proposal makes The Netherlands privacy-unfriendly

#69

Post by stonemetal »

cmdrfred wrote: post #53
stonemetal wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>marriage is a religious institution, seems pretty clear. No one is debating marriage the religious institution, you can go have whatever private marriages you want, and religions can still discriminate. What was being debated was the somewhat different, marriage the legal entity that effects inheritance, joint custody and all the other legal benefits that spouses get. They commonly occur together but they do't have…

Clearly, but why do married people get any benefit that people who are not don't have? Isn't that in and of itself discriminatory? Isn't the government defacto promoting region in general by giving tax breaks to people who choose to contract with each other in such a manner?

Marriage as a legal entity is a legal recognition of a social custom. While some prefer to establish that social custom with a religious ceremony, there is nothing inherently religious about it. For example Buddhism has no religious institution of marriage, yet countries that are primarily Buddhist still have marriage as a civil entity.
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